1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to document handling equipment including document feeding machines. More specifically, the invention relates to small, counter-top, low-profile document feeding machines.
2. Background Art
There is a trend in the processing of checks and like financial instruments towards what is known as “distributed capture.” With the passage of the “Check Processing for the 21st Century Act of 2004” (a/k/a “Check 21”), there is market pressure towards processing checks closer and closer to the point of capture—the teller window or the check-out line. To this end, manufacturers of check-processing machinery are offering a range of check-processing machines which are much smaller, lighter and cheaper than the traditional mass-processing systems which have dominated this market for 40 years.
For example, the MyVisionX product is a low-profile document feeding machine for decentralized document processing, and is available from Unisys Corporation, Blue Bell, Pa. The MyVisionX product is representative of a large number of machines, very similar in size, function, footprint and cost, which are offered by a number of different manufacturers. Among the functional requirements for such machines are: the very smallest possible footprint to minimize the use of counter space, the lowest possible profile (height), and one-handed loading and unloading.
To meet these ends, manufacturers typically optimize the designs of their machines around the size of the “standard” United States personal check, which is 6″ long by 2.75″ high. Problems often arise when users attempt to load much larger documents into such machines. Checks up to 9.5″ long and 4.5″ high are by no means unknown in the United States, and these very small machines have difficulty in handling documents this large.
The low profile of the machine typically means that taller items are unsupported at their upper edges when loaded into a feed hopper, and will fall over or fold horizontally because they are top-heavy. And the small footprint of these machines typically means that the area available in the feed hopper to support the bottom edges of loaded documents is less than half of the length of the longer type of document. As a result, the long documents overbalance and fall out of the hopper.
Traditional mass-processing systems have always addressed these issues by surrounding the documents with hopper walls almost as high as the tallest documents, by making feed hoppers with floor surfaces long enough to support the very longest documents, and by securing the documents with a hand-operated movable flag that is almost as high as the tallest documents. In this way, documents can be fully supported and cannot tip over or overbalance.
These approaches, however, are not directly applicable to this new class of smaller machines because these approaches violate the functional requirements for lowest profile, smallest possible footprint, and one-handed loading and unloading.
For the foregoing reasons, there is a need for a low-profile document feeding machine that addresses the problem of very long and/or tall documents presenting difficulties in feeding because they are top-heavy and will not stand vertically in the conventional feed hopper.